It is Jo’s turn to speak: so she stands and spills her guts before the hushed
assembly. In emotional waves, the young woman unpeels her innermost traumas
— a friend’s tragic death, the break-up of a relationship and being sick
with intense feelings of love. But this isn’t group therapy. It’s a newly
emerging form of entertainment: stand-up sharing.
Welcome to the fast-growing world of spoken-word open mikes. The events, held
in clubs and the back rooms of pubs in major British cities, began as
contests of poetic skill or creative writing. But they have developed a far
deeper dimension because they offer two of the rarest commodities in busy
young city-dwellers’ lives: silence and people who will listen for five
minutes. Often there’s a whole room-full hankering to hear these modern-day
confessors.
Jo Tedds and I are sitting in the back room of the Oh! Bar in Camden, North
London. A small red-curtained stage frames us. Chairs are scraped around in
readiness for the weekly Thursday evening show. Jo works as a college
library assistant, not usually an occupation known for public outbusts. But,
like many young people, she had written down her private griefs and traumas.
When she shared them with her friends, they persuaded her to expose them to
a wider audience. “My most recent performance was after a grim winter,” says
the 24-year-old, who performs under the nom de stand-up: Gipsy
Girl. “The pieces were titled Good Grief.”
The pieces cover her friend Leigh’s death from an accidental overdose. He was
the first person she had lost who was close to her, and she felt terrible
guilt and distress. Soon after, she broke up with her boyfriend of two
years. Yet she remains philosophical and her final performance lines are
always optimistic.
“I find it therapeutic to talk. I think speaking out at open mikes should be
encouraged,” says Jo. She performs at other London events, where spoken word
is mixed with live music and DJs.
Up to 30 fellow performers sign up each Thursday at the Oh! Bar and share
their inner secrets with 50 or more listeners sitting packed in neat rows.
The seem sympathetic to the performer. If it weren’t for all the drinking
and smoking, you might think they were in a 12-step-programme. Niall
O’Sullivan hosts the evening, which he developed over the past three years.
O’Sullivan, 32, also teaches writing workshops and is a regular-looking guy
with an easy demeanour.
“What people get high on when they hear confessional poetry is that the writer
is taking something difficult and presenting it in a beautiful way,” he
says. “If you read out something deep and dark, people in the audience feel
stronger for hearing someone else talk about it. It’s nice to not feel like
such a freak, like you’re not the only one,” he says.
Guy J Jackson, a frequent performer who is a broad-shouldered, bearded man in
Woody Allen glasses, agrees: “If you have a problem, you can share it. Even
with a literary sugar-coat-ing, it has a bit of the AA-meeting philosophy.”
Jackson is a film-maker by day, and nocturnal teller of his bittersweet life
story. Many of the performers’ accounts are themselves the stuff of arthouse
film plots: sex and breakups are common ground, but there are also tales
about drugs, prostitutes and internet dating, confessions of hatred, love or
carelessness.
Jackson hopes by telling his story he can help others. “I got this
pain-in-the-ass obsessive-com-pulsive disorder where I check the door locks
close to a hundred times before I leave my apartment. It makes me late for
everything, and it makes me think I’m a madman. In my stories I purge my
failing a little and help myself be better, plus I might be helping someone
else out there with OCD.” His father died five years ago after a long
illness. The experience is a kernel of many of his stories. Jackson gets up
on the little wooden stage to tell a story; and, as he sits back down to
warm applause, he turns to me and says: “I’m just writing about what a big
fat human I am. We’re all human together.”
Shared humanity isn’t only the stuff of bittersweet humour, though. Racism and
time spent in psychiatric hospitals are at the heart of Naomi’s most
personal poems.
“I feel I have something valid that should be shared. I would find keeping my
poetry in a diary a bit like holding my breath.” she says. Naomi was found
to have bipolar disorder after she was discovered wandering confused and
barefoot near Buckingham Palace at 3am. “Sometimes I get episodes when I
think I am the next queen of England,” Naomi explains. “I take prescription
drugs for it, but there’s not a lot anyone can do.” She finds reading her
story aloud cathartic.
Every day there is a different survey reporting on how people live, but we
know nothing of the person we bump knees with on the train. The curiosity
that leads listeners to an open mike is surely healthier than our addiction
to soaps. It’s a curiosity that can take you to some dark places. Donall has
wild hair and an infectious laugh. He works as a special-needs teacher in
Tottenham, North London, and started performing to recover from severe
facial paralysis after an accident that made talking painful and difficult.
He reads a poem about the death of his unborn child.
“Early in my wife’s pregnancy we lost the baby, it happened at home and there
was blood everywhere. My wife said, ‘Don’t flush my baby away!’ I didn’t
know what to do, so I buried the foetus beneath a rose bush in our local
park. You just can’t be prepared for something like that,” he says. Of his
poem he says: “It was my solution. There had to be somewhere where I could
lay down the pain. There are people out there grateful to have this grief
articulated for them, for helping them to understand, or just be aware. It
is healing for them and for me.”
Fancy a go? Check out these stand-up venues
LONDON
Open mikes Spoken Word Cabaret, Oh! Bar, Camden High Street: every
first and third Monday (myspace.com/spokencabaret) Touch Me I’m Sick, Old
Crown Pub, New Oxford Street: third Wednesday of the month
Shows Shortfuse, Camden Head, Camden Walk: every Thursday
(20six.co.uk/shortfuse) Lazy Gramophone, The MacBeth, Hoxton Street and
The Luminaire, Kilburn High Road: monthly (lazygramophone.com)
OUTSIDE LONDON
Open mikes
Edinburgh Big Word Performance Poetry, The Tron Bar, Royal Mile:
fortnightly.
Cardiff Last Thursday, The Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea: last Thursday
of the month
Oxford Poet Yourself, Borders Books, Magdalen Street: third Monday of
the month
